Zulip uses @zulipbot, a GitHub workflow bot
deployed on all Zulip repositories, to handle issues and pull requests in our
repositories in order to create a better workflow for Zulip contributors.

Its purpose is to work around various limitations in GitHub’s
permissions and notifications systems to make it possible to have a
much more democractic workflow for our contributors. It allows anyone
to self-assign or label an issue, not just the core contributors
trusted with full write access to the repository (which is the only
model GitHub supports).

Claim an issue — Comment @zulipbotclaim on the issue you want
to claim; @zulipbot will assign you to the issue and label the issue as
in progress.

If you’re a new contributor, @zulipbot will give you read-only
collaborator access to the repository and leave a welcome message on the
issue you claimed.

You can also claim an issue that you’ve opened by including
@zulipbotclaim in the body of your issue.

If you accidentally claim an issue you didn’t want to claim, comment
@zulipbotabandon to abandon an issue.

Label your issues — Add appropriate labels to issues that you opened by
including @zulipbotadd in an issue comment or the body of your issue
followed by the desired labels enclosed within double quotes ("").

For example, to add the bug and help wanted labels to your
issue, comment or include @zulipbotadd"bug""helpwanted" in the
issue body.

You’ll receive an error message if you try to add any labels to your issue
that don’t exist in your repository.

If you accidentally added the wrong labels, you can remove them by commenting
@zulipbotremove followed by the desired labels enclosed with double quotes
("").

Find unclaimed issues — Use the GitHub search
feature
to find unclaimed issues by adding one of the following filters to your search:

-label:"inprogress" (excludes issues labeled with the in progress label)

no:assignee (shows issues without assignees)

Issues labeled with the in progress label and/or assigned to other users have
already been claimed.

Collaborate in area label teams — Receive notifications on
issues and pull requests within your fields of expertise on the
Zulip server repository by joining
the Zulip server
area label teams
(Note: this link only works for members of the Zulip organization;
we’ll happily add you if you’re interested). These teams correspond
to the repository’s
area labels, although some
teams are associated with multiple labels; for example, the area:
message-editing and area: message view labels are both related
to the
Server message view
team. Feel free to join as many area label teams as as you’d like!

After your request to join an area label team is approved, you’ll receive
notifications for any issues labeled with the team’s corresponding area
label as well as any pull requests that reference issues labeled with your
team’s area label.

Track inactive claimed issues — If a claimed issue has not been updated
for a week, @zulipbot will post a comment on the inactive issue to ask the
assignee(s) if they are still working on the issue.

If you see this comment on an issue you claimed, you should post a comment
on the issue to notify @zulipbot that you’re still working on it.

If @zulipbot does not receive a response from the assignee within 3 days
of an inactive issue prompt, @zulipbot will automatically remove the
issue’s current assignee(s) and the “in progress” label to allow others to
work on an inactive issue.

Receive Travis build status notifications — If you would like to receive
a notification whenever the build status of your pull request is updated, label
your pull request with the “travis updates” label using the command @zulipbotlabel"travisupdates", and @zulipbot will let you know the build status
(e.g. passed, failed, errored) of your pull request once all tests finish.